Mongul and Sinestro’s throne smackdown

So to make Superman more interesting, super powerful space aliens would come down once in a while to beat up the Man of Steel.  Y’know, have someone challenge Superman with equal strength and ability.  Mongul was created for that purpose.

And today, he joins the Sinestro Corps.

Mongul, like most space dictators in the past decade or so, caused trouble mainly in the depths of the Green Lantern universe, where the space cops flew around and shot at him with willpower lasers. Wondering the difference between Mongul and Superman’s other dictator supervillain Darkseid?  Both look the same, have similar powers, and control alien planets.  But Darkseid?  He’s blue.  That’s all I have.  My research faltered this week.

Anyway, with the yellow power ring — just like the Green Lantern ones except they run off of fear — he does the responsibly evil thing.  Conquer lots of planets and take control of the Sinestro Corps:

Above scenes from Green Lantern Corps #19-20, 23, and 33 written by Peter J. Tomasi and drawn by Patrick Gleason.

But we’re not here to see Mongul’s reign of terror.  We’re jumping ahead two years to Green Lantern #46, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Doug Mahnke.  Y’see, when the army’s named after Sinestro, eventually the dude himself is going to show up.

Sinestro, the Green Lantern Corps’ arch-nemesis and all-around jerk, arrives (unexpectedly) to take down Mongul.  A few things to note.  Korugar is Sinestro’s home planet.  So he not only has to beat down a Superman-level baddie, but if he loses, his planet’s permanently enslaved.

By the way, notice Mongul’s missing an eye in the above page?  There’s been some crazy stories.

Understand that Sinestro, like most supervillains, has an ego problem.  But more importantly, Sinestro has zero superpowers besides his ring.  Mongul has six rings and the physical strength to bench press small moons.

If you know Sinestro’s back story, he used to be the greatest Green Lantern of them all.  Until his pupil and handsome Earthling Hal Jordan discovered Sinestro was using the ring to conquer and brutally rule his home planet for his own selfish desires.  Much like what Mongul’s doing now.  It’s not as if Sinestro’s morality has changed, it’s just he believes that if anyone should cause endless pain and suffering to Korugar, it should be a Korugarian.

Yes, Mongul would give the entire Justice League a run for their money.  Except he forgot something. He’s using Sinestro’s ring against Sinestro.  That’s like sending out sharks and jelly fish to defeat Aquaman.

Now you get to witness something rarely seen in comics.  A pun made by one of the deadliest beings in the universe.

And Mongul hasn’t been seen since.